Authors: Katharine Kerr
“Pertyc, curse you,” Leomyr called out. “Won’t you even parley?”
“Here’s my parley.”
Pertyc raised his bow, aimed, and loosed, all in one smooth motion. The arrow sang as it flew, striking Leomyr in the shoulder. Pertyc grabbed another, nocked it, loosed again, and saw Leomyr reel in the saddle as the arrow bit through his mail and sank into his chest. With a shout the other archers rose, nocked, and loosed in a slippery whisper of arrows. Pertyc heard Halaberiel laugh aloud as his shot knocked another man clean off his mount.
“Try to spare the horses!” the banadar yelled in Deverrian, then howled out the same order in Elvish.
In the boiling panic that erupted out on the field, Leomyr tumbled over his horse’s neck to the ground. Horses screamed and reared; men shrieked and fell and rushed this way and that. The men carrying the ram threw it to the ground and raced for the road, but only two of them made it. Pertyc was only aware of the dance of it: loose, pull an arrow, nock and loose again, leaning effortlessly, picking a target, bracing himself as the last of the enemy warband charged the gates, simply because they could think of nothing else to do. As the wave swept forward, Pertyc had the satisfaction of seeing Leomyr’s body trampled by his own men. Halaberiel yelled in Elvish; his men swung round to aim directly into the charge. The arrows flew down; men and horses dropped and whinnied and swore and bled. Finally Pertyc could stand this slaughter of the helpless no longer. He lowered his bow and began screaming at the enemy.
“Retreat, you stupid bastards! You can’t win! Retreat!”
And simply because he was noble-born and they were hysterical, they followed his orders and wheeled round to flee. With shouts and curses Halaberiel called off the archers and let them go, flogging a last bit of speed out of their sweating horses as they galloped for the road. Swearing, Pertyc realized that it was over. Nothing moved on the field but wounded horses, struggling to rise, then falling back.
“Open the gates, lads!” Pertyc yelled out. “Let’s see what we can do for the poor bastards they’ve left behind.”
His men cheered, laughing, slapping each other on the back. Pertyc fought to keep from weeping. He’d never expected his idea to work so well, and as he looked at the carnage below him, he suddenly understood why Eldidd men had ignored the existence of longbows for so many hundreds of years. With one last convulsive sob, he slung his bow over his back and climbed down the ladder to the cheering of his men.
Pertyc set some of the men to carrying what few wounded there were into the dun, then ordered others to start burying the dead and putting badly wounded horses out of their misery. He himself found Leomyr’s mangled body and dragged it free of a tangle of dead animals. He laid Leomyr out flat, crossed his arms over his chest, then rose, staring down at the corpse.
“I hope you freeze in the hells tonight.”
He kicked Leomyr hard in the side of the head, then went back inside the dun. Adraegyn came running and grabbed his hand.
“Can I come out now? This isn’t fair, Da, shutting me up like one of the women!”
“Tell me somewhat, Draego. Do you want to be king of Eldidd?”
“I don’t. I’d only be a usurper, not a king. Isn’t that what you said, Da? You’re always right, you know. Oh, this is splendid. Glae said you killed them all. Did you truly?”
“Most. Come along. There’s a lesson my da taught me that it’s time to teach you.”
Pertyc led him to the area just beyond the gates where the warband was piling up the bodies of the dead. Pertyc held Adraegyn’s hand tight and dragged him over to the heaped and contorted corpses. When Adraegyn tried to twist free and run, Pertyc grabbed him by the shoulders and forced him round to face the sight. The lad burst out weeping.
“This is what glory means, Draego,” Pertyc said. “You’ve got to see it. Look at them.”
Adraegyn was sobbing so hard that he could barely stand. Pertyc picked him up in his arms, carried him over to Leomyr, then set the weeping lad down.
“Do you remember Tieryn Dun Gwerbyn, Draego?” Pertyc said.
His face streaming with tears, Adraegyn nodded.
“I killed him,” Pertyc went on. “I stood on our wall and hit him twice and knocked him off his horse. You know why? Because he killed Danry. That’s what having a blood-sworn friend means, lad. Look at him. Someday you’ll be Lord Cannobaen, and you’ll have a friend you love the way I loved Danry.”
Slowly, a sniffle at a time, Adraegyn stopped crying.
“What happened to his face?” the boy whispered.
“The horses kicked his body a lot.”
Adraegyn turned away, pulled free of Pertyc’s hand, and began to vomit. When he was finished, Pertyc knelt down beside him, pulled a handful of grass, and wiped the lad’s mouth.
“Do you still think it’s splendid?”
Adraegyn shook his head in a mute no.
“Well and good, then. Once, when I was your age, your gran did to me what I just did to you. It’s part of what makes us Maelwaedds.”
Carrying shovels, servants trotted past. Adraegyn turned his face away from the sight.
“You can sleep in my bed with me tonight,” Pertyc said. “Doubtless you’ll have bad dreams. I did.”
That evening, Pertyc shut his gates again, posted guards, and called the rest of his men into the great hall. He ordered mead poured all round, then had the servants ceremoniously chop up the captured ram and feed it into the fire. The men cheered, calling out to him and laughing, pledging him with their goblets as the best captain they’d ever seen. Pertyc merely smiled and called back that they deserved all the glory. On the morrow he would make a grim speech, but for now he wanted them to taste their victory. The elves were another matter. Pertyc called them together out of the hearing of the rest of the men.
“You can leave tomorrow at dawn if you’d like, with as much booty as your horses can carry. There’s no need for you to see the defeat. The rest of the rebels are on their way here as fast as they can ride, or so Nevyn tells me, and they’ve picked up some reinforcements.”
“Well, Perro,” Halaberiel said. “That’s honorable of you
and all, but we don’t ride into a race only to ride out again at the first taste of dust.”
“Are you certain? Look, you know enough about bowcraft to know that sixteen archers can’t repel an army of three hundred.”
“Not forever. But there’ll only be a hundred and fifty left by the time we’re done with them, if we have the least bit of luck.”
“Bound to have luck,” Calonderiel broke in. “The Wise One of the West is here, and so’s the Wise One of the East. Ye gods, if we’ve got so much evil luck coming our way that those two can’t turn it aside, then we’ll only fall off our horses on the journey home and break our necks.”
Late that night, once the wounded men were tended and asleep, Nevyn climbed up to the top of the tower. Since the beacon keeper was used to his eccentric ways by then, he merely said a pleasant “Good evening” and returned to chopping some of the continual firewood for the light. Nevyn sat down comfortably with his back to the guard wall and studied the fire, a splendid, large luxury for scrying. In a few minutes, a portion of the Cannobaen blaze turned into a tiny campfire, and round it paced Gatryc and Ladoic, talking in hushed voices. Nevyn focused his will and brought himself closer to the vision, until he could see Gatryc’s grayish face. Every time the gwerbret moved his arm, he winced and bit his lower lip. The wounds were infected, most like, Nevyn thought with a professional detachment. Nearby two of the men who’d ridden with Leomyr sat on the ground, slumped and exhausted. So the lords knew that Leomyr was dead and that if they wanted Adraegyn they’d have to come get him themselves.
Nevyn widened the vision until it seemed that he swooped over the countryside from a great height and found that the rebels were less than a day’s ride, perhaps twelve miles, away. What counted more was the king’s location. That search took a little longer, but eventually Nevyn spotted the royal army some fifty miles away, camped on the road just outside the western gate of Aberwyn. A flash of gloom cost him the vision. From what he understood of Halaberiel’s talk, their small squad of archers would be unable
to turn back the newly augmented rebel army before they managed to ram open the gates. The rebels were warned, now, that archers with elven longbows held the walls, and they wouldn’t be stupid enough to come charging right in as Leomyr had. Well, if the king won’t arrive in time, Nevyn told himself, we’ll just have to slow the rebels up, then. The question is, how? He leaned back against the wall and considered the play of flames while he weighed possibilities.
All at once the wind gusted, and the lightkeeper swore and coughed, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Cursed smoke!” he muttered.
Just in time Nevyn kept himself from laughing, because, of course, it wasn’t the poor man’s stinging eyes that were amusing him. He got up and bade the lightkeeper good night, wondering what the man would think if he knew his small misfortune might have just saved the entire dun. For this work, though, he would need privacy. He hunted up Aderyn, who took him to his chamber at the top of the broch.
“I’m not sure I can really pull this off,” Nevyn said after he’d explained his plan. “According to the Bardek scrolls that I’ve been studying, it’s theoretically possible, but theory’s one thing and practice another.”
“Well, if you can’t, we’ll try to think of somewhat else. Are you ready to go into trance? I’ve got the door barred.”
“I am, at that. If I start flopping around, hold me down, will you? I do that sometimes in deep trance.”
As soon as Nevyn assumed the body of light, he left the dun, hovered high above it for a moment to gather strength, then flew off to the rebel camp. By the time he reached it, most of the men were already asleep, but Gwerbret Gatryc was awake and sitting by his council fire with a handful of the noble-born and what few captains remained. What infuriated Nevyn was that they knew their cause was already lost. They were planning on making Aeryc pay high for his peace and naught more, just so they could die with what they called honor, no matter what the cost to the farmers and villagers of Eldidd.
After a few moments of rest, Nevyn floated close to the fire, which welled and purled with golden currents of pure etheric energy and thick blackish smoke, because the lords
were burning damp and moldy wood culled from the forest floor. Nevyn prepared his mind in the way his theoretical scrolls recommended, called on the god-names they suggested for good measure, then slowly sucked up the energy, drew the fine particles of smoke to himself, and bound them round him by force of will. With one sharp thrust, he called on the Lords of Fire for aid. The smoke particles rushed and clung, caught in the stresses of his body of light the way iron filings arrange themselves around a lodestone. Gatryc yelped in terror and scrambled to his feet, his rotting arm dangling useless at his side. When the other lords all leapt up, too, cursing and staring, Nevyn could assume that yes, he was quite visible as a ghost-creature of smoke. Since he had no throat to speak with, he sent thoughts to their minds.
“Beware,” Nevyn intoned. “Beware! Beware, O impious men! The gods have lost patience with your cause. Beware, lest you feast with me tomorrow in the Otherlands.”
Nevyn could see their auras draw in sharply, a panic reaction as the fine forces rushed back to the body. In one convulsive step the pack of men fell back. Nevyn noticed that behind them, a couple of the riders had woken and sat up to stare.
“Who are you?” Gatryc stammered.
“I am the spirit of Aenycyr, last king of Eldidd. Be you mindful of my tragic tale?”
“We are.”
“For this little while, the Lord of Hell has allowed me to walk upon the earth, that I may warn you men who love Eldidd so greatly.” He hesitated, trying to remember more of the old saga that he was quoting. “Though your cause is just, your Wyrd is harsh. Not even the dead know when the time will come for Eldidd to rise again. Beware!”
The strain of keeping the smoke-built body was growing too great. Nevyn could feel his improvised form swirling and wavering over the fire. He decided that specifically warning them off Pertyc might be too blatant for an omen and allowed most of the form to drift back into smoke, but he did keep the face intact for a few moments longer.
“Even as I speak the Lord of Hell recalls me. Throw this folly aside, men of Eldidd, or on the morrow night you’ll dine with me in the Otherlands.”
As the last bit of smoke swirled away, Nevyn sent out an exhalation of pure panic. Just as the scrolls predicted, the men thought they heard an actual shriek, a grating, blood-freezing howl like a banshee’s, as he raced through the camp in his body of light, thrusting that thought into the minds of the sleeping riders as well as those of the lords. The men threw off their blankets, stumbled to their feet, cursing, swearing, asking each other what that ungodly wail might have been.
The Wildfolk heard it, too. Radiating distress, which the more sensitive of the men dimly felt as their own, they materialized into physical form but clustered round Nevyn’s body of light, which they of course could see, in an enormous pack. All at once, he got another inspired idea.
“See those men?” Nevyn thought to them. “They’re very bad men. They want to kill Aderyn and Halaberiel.”
If they could have screamed in rage, they would have as they swept off through the camp. They pinched and kicked and bit, hammering the men, grabbing the horses. In a yelling, neighing, swatting, kicking chaos, the camp erupted. At this point, Nevyn realized that he was dangerously exhausted. He rushed back along the silver cord to the dun and slipped into his body. As he woke to normal consciousness, he found that he was lying all in a heap in the curve of the wall. Panting for breath, Aderyn had his arms around him.
“By the gods!” Aderyn snarled. “If I’d known how strong you are in trance, I’d’ve got Maer up here to help hold you down.”
“You have my sincerely humble apologies. Are you all right?”
“You gave me a clip on the jaw, but otherwise I am. How did it go?”